


Act IV, Scene III of With Further Ado, or, Don Pedro's Bride:  “The Confession Scene.”

by MotherInLore



Category: Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M, Literary Theory, Melodrama, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 14:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7535977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherInLore/pseuds/MotherInLore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this pivotal scene, several strands of the plot come together as Don Pedro, unbeknownst to the imprisoned Sybella, overhears her explaining her actions on the night of his attempted murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Act IV, Scene III of With Further Ado, or, Don Pedro's Bride:  “The Confession Scene.”

_Enter_ DON PEDRO _and_ FRIAR.

DON PEDRO: And has she spoken at all?

FRIAR: She prays at the appointed hours, and she asks of all who enter, with seeming great anxiety, if your grace's health yet mends. To all inquiry else, she has made no answer but that she will speak when time is ripe.

DON PEDRO: And go you then to hear her?

FRIAR: I do.

DON PEDRO: Then, I prithee, let me don the raiment of your brethren, and listen too. I fain would learn of what she has to say, and I fain would not have her know me.

FRIAR: A worthy notion. Take this robe, then, and keep the hood well forward.

 _Enter_ GUARD, _with_ SYBELLA

GUARD: Here is the prisoner, your worships. I will leave her here and stand without the door. An you have need of me, you have but to call.

 _Exit_ GUARD.

FRIAR: Lady Sybella?

SYBELLA: How fares his grace?

FRIAR: He is well enough to walk, and to eat with good appetite such food as he may trust to be wholesome. 'Tis thought a few days more, and 'twill be as if the last few days had never been.

SYBELLA: Thanks be to God!

DON PEDRO [aside]: Strange words from a confessed poisoner. 

FRIAR: The prince also is mended enough to have pronounced upon you a sentence of death for your base and treasonous act, though he may yet stay his hand if he learns of any reason to do so. Are you at last prepared to confess?

SYBELLA: I am. I waited only to learn that his grace was safe, and to speak when I would be heard. For had he died, the ensuing howls of grief and anger mixed would have drowned aught that I could say in my defense. I am no poisoner.

FRIAR: And yet you were seen to put the powder in his cup! And now may expect to die at his command.

SYBELLA: Most holy friar, I have heard  
All my life long, in myriad homilies,  
In proverbs, stories, and in song  
How we women are by nature framed for wickedness;  
How men do exceed at every turn  
Those few poor virtues we possess.  
Yet in one thing, and one alone, I would yet claim  
A woman hath advantage born in her.  
For it is taught the savior of us all  
Did bid us love our enemies,  
And in this a woman has the easier part by far.  
For never being sent to war,  
We die instead of babes we gladly bear,  
Of sickness when we nurse with tender care  
Another we would yet see mend.  
Even our murderers oft are those we love:  
Not every jealous husband's justified  
When he sees perfidy in every glance.  
And so, though I've no wish to leave this life,  
If I do so at Don Pedro's word  
I'll join a populous sisterhood indeed.

FRIAR: Then, do you claim to love the prince?

SYBELLA: I do love him, as the old tales would say, as meat loves salt.

FRIAR: How came you then to do as you have done?

SYBELLA: You will have heard I came late to the feasting. The cause was a boy, the little bandylegged turnspit, who waylaid me in a panic fear. He told me that one in a doctor's robe had bid him set aside a portion of the fowl and mark it for the prince, and to in the roasting of it anoint it with certain herbs, which said doctor did provide him with. Wee Turnspit did as he was bid, and it then happened that one of the kitchen dogs – a favorite of young squire Bandylegs, did lick at the boy's hands, all powdered as they were with herbs. Scarce half an hour later, as the fowls were sent out, the hound fell to shaking and howling as in pain, and then fell dead. The boy was in great apprehension, and babbled his tale to me all wrong-end frontways, and I knew the fowls would already be at table. I dared not tarry; at once I took a purgative from the still room, and put it in his grace's cup, that it might work the sooner. I meant then to find my father, and tell him of all that came to pass, but in course, his grace fell ill, and Don John accused me, and all thereafter happened too quickly for me to explain.

FRIAR: So you would have it, lady, that so far from poisoning his grace, it is to you that he owes his life?

SYBELLA: I would not call any man indebted to me for doing my plain duty of seeing to the health of a guest in my father's house, but marry, this much is true: The prince was given both poison and purgative at the feast, the second only of these from my hand, and the first a direful one. I beg you, let only poor Bandylegs be found and examined, and if his testimony is deemed false, and myself guilty, I yet will pray that the true villain ne'er will harm the prince again, and that he will yet be brought to justice in some other wise.

FRIAR: I promise, the turnspit shall be examined. And would you perhaps venture the poisoner's name, if it not be yours?

SYBELLA: I think but few could do that save little Bandylegs, should he see and know the false doctor's face again. Yet were I guessing idly, I would say that none do hate the prince more than his brother. It seems Envy doth ride the bastard as a May Day guiser rides his hobby. Any gift from the prince's hand, to Don John is a stinging goad; the offense lies in his brother's power of giving. Likewise will the bastard revel to take a tenth as much by guile from an unwilling hand. Marry, though, I would not have thought him such a coward as to call upon a poisoner's arts, and it may be that my thoughts, too, are twisted by some craven wish for vengeance. For of all the hounds that howled for my blood when Don Pedro fell ill, Don John and his friends belled the loudest.

FRIAR: I will confess, my own suspicions tend in some measure to the same direction, though of late they have been spinning like unto a very weathercock of doubt. I can only pray that He that seest all may in his mercy open all our eyes to the truth. Come now, I will return you to your cell for a time, and we may hope that a good end yet may come of this.

 _Exunt_ FRIAR _and_ SYBELLA

DON PEDRO: A weathercock of doubt indeed! Did that same gale blow upon the sea as doth turn in my own mind, 'twould sink a fleet of ships. Was't angel, or witch, that I thus overheard?  
She hath a most discerning eye, withall,  
To name my brother's trouble and my own,  
And in the same breath to say she may be wrong.  
An she doth lie, she is a witch indeed,  
To so compound her subtle potions with  
Yet subtler lies; and turn my heart against  
My twice-forgiven brother yet again.  
E'en so, my doubts must the more careful be  
For that in my heart of hearts I wish  
To think the lady true, as she is fair.  
And if she speaketh nothing but the truth?  
Why then, high courage shows she: to act with speed,  
To face her death without a qualm,  
To speak against a guest within her house,  
To save another.  
An she speak true, then kindness has she,  
And wisdom, to hear the simple turnspit's tale  
And parse from his poor babblings a danger to myself  
That she did act upon. If she speaks true,  
The maiden loves me; “As meat loves salt,” she said.  
Fair, courageous, kind, and wise- such a one  
I could requite indeed, an she be true.  
An she be false, the greater be my pain  
That she robbed me of such a love as this,  
This most beguiling vision.

Angel or witch, this much I swear: the maid's not long for Karalis. Ere I leave this house, I'll see her hanged for a traitoress, else I'll see her to her bridebed, and take her as my wife with me to Aragorn.

**Author's Note:**

> When _With Further Ado, or, Don Pedro's Bride,_ was first performed by the Duke's Men in October of 1675, with the great Thomas Babbington in the role of Don Pedro, it was commonly assumed to be a work of Shakespeare's. In a letter to his brother, Samuel Pepys discusses the many parallels with other Shakespearean plays, describing the antics of Bandylegs and comparing Don Pedro's meditations on the burdens of princehood favorably to those in the Henry plays. “Nonetheless,” Pepys concluded, “I find all this running about in masques most Tedious, and the scene in which Don Pedro wears Priest's robes is too like _Measure For Measure.”_
> 
> Over the ensuing decades, it became clear that _With Further Ado_ was in fact a pastiche, imitating the Shakespearean style to address Restoration-era concerns. Some scholars have suggested that the pretense may have served to render the mentions of Catholicism in the play more acceptable. While the play's true author has never been positively identified, it is often attributed to Aphra Behn. Proponents of this theory point to the innuendo in the Bandylegs scenes, together with the treatment of the female characters, both in the Don Pedro-and-Sybella plot and in the “gentle conspiracy” between Hero and her new sisters-in-law. 
> 
> These proto-feminist themes have contributed to the play's current popularity. The famous 1986 Steppenwolf Theater revival attributed authorship to “Shakespeare's Sister.” Laurie Metcalf, who played Franzeca in that production, described the secondary plot, in which Hero and Claudio begin their married life, as “A gender-flipped Taming of the Shrew.” Kenneth Branagh's recent film version emphasizes this to an even greater degree, by cutting lines 32-48 from Don Pedro's speech in Act IV, scene 1 and instead giving them to Don John at the end of Act III, thus assigning nearly all of the play's misogyny to the villains.


End file.
